Agenda for November 2020
Newton St Cyres Parish Council
Notice of Meeting of Parish Council
Dear Councillors
I hereby give notice that a Meeting of the above-named Parish Council will be held remotely using Zoom on Thursday 5 November 2020 at 7.00pm.
All members of the Council are hereby summoned to attend for the purpose of considering and resolving upon the Business to be transacted at the meeting set out hereunder.
Dated this 30 October 2020
Signed Jane Hole
Clerk to the Parish Council parishclerk@newtonstcyres-pc.gov.uk 01392 851148
Public Participation – please email jimenright@newtonstcyres-pc.gov.uk by 6pm on Thursday 5 November for details of how to join the zoom meeting
Public Participation
Public Question Time. Members of the public are invited to give their views and ask questions on issues on this agenda or to raise issues for future consideration by the Parish Council.
Formal Business
(Members of the public may not take part in the formal business of the Parish Council except under special circumstances)
01/11/20 Apologies - To receive apologies
02/11/20 Declaration of Interest
2.1 Register of Interests. Councillors to update as required
2.2 Personal Interests. Councillors must declare any personal interest in items on the agenda and their nature.
2.3 Prejudicial Interests. Councillors must declare any prejudicial interest in items on the agenda and their nature and they must leave the meeting for that agenda item.
03/11/20 Minutes of the last meeting held on Thursday 1 October 2020 (previously circulated)
To be agreed and signed as a true record
04/11/20 Mid Devon District Council
4.1 Planning Applications:
20/01554/FULL - Erection of 4 dwellings and associated works following demolition and removal of agricultural buildings at Bidwell Barton Farm, Newton St Cyres
20/01584/MOUT - Outline for the erection of a 50 bedroom nursing home at Langford Park Nursing Home, Langford Road, Langford
20/01678/FULL - Conversion of barn to dwelling and erection of extension to side at Bodley Farm, Newton St Cyres
East Devon District Council 20/1517/FUL - Construction of digestate storage lagoon, with associated hardstanding and 2.4 metre high security fencing at Land South of Rixenford Lane, Upton Pyne – NSC PC are not consultees. However the issues are with regard to accuracy of planning applications and how traffic implications can affect parishes outside the consultation area
4.2 Planning Decisions: None
4.3 To note the Local Government Boundary review have accepted the proposals put forward by Cllr G Barnell and are now consulting on this amendment – details at: https://www.lgbce.org.uk/all-reviews/south-west/devon/mid-devon
4.4 District Councillor, Cllr G Barnell, to report on MDDC business relevant to the Parish
05/11/20 Finance
5.1 Parish Council Receipts Current Account:
MDDC £6,715.50 – second instalment of precept
Shobrooke Parish Council £12.50 – Shobrooke portion of training course for Clerk
5.2 Parish Council Payment Current Account:
|
Item |
Payee |
Purpose |
Amount £ |
|---|---|---|---|
|
5.2.1 |
DALC |
Planning course x 2 places |
36.00 |
|
5.2.2 |
Ian Salter |
Bus Shelter cleaning |
32.00 |
|
5.2.3 |
AET Flood Defence Ltd |
135 aqua sacs (grant received) |
600.00 |
|
5.2.4 |
R Nethercott |
Grass cutting for new graveyard |
135.00 |
|
5.2.5 |
J Hole |
Salary and expenses |
308.63 |
|
5.2.6 |
HMRC |
PAYE |
36.40 |
5.3 To approve signatures for this month’s cheques
5.4 Balances (after above transactions)
5.4.1 Parish Council Current Account balance: £16,291.28
5.4.2 Footpath Account: £268.02
5.4.3 Car Park resurfacing fund balance: £6,013.93
5.5 Financial Statement and Budget Monitor (attached)
06/11/20 Matters raised by the Chair
6.1 None
07/11/20 Councillor’s Reports
7.1 Update on Coronavirus and NSC PC response
7.2 Areas of Responsibility reports
7.2.1 Report from Raddon Hills meeting
7.2.2 To note Arboretum Risk Assessment – circulated separately
08/11/20 Clerk’s Report
8.1 To resolve that criteria are in place for application to Local Council Award Scheme – Quality level – details circulated separately
09/11/20 Parish Council
9.1 Update on progress with Community Shop – to note email received from parishioner – see below
9.2 To note response below from Peninsula Road Safety Partnership – see below – it is not possible to have the raw data from the recent speed monitoring on the A377. To consider the PC strategy to ensure that speeding on the A377 is addressed. To note email sent to DCC to enquire when work on the pedestrian crossing will start.
9.3 To note DCC further clarification on double white lines on the A377 – see below
9.4 To consider a parish Broadband survey. Draft questionnaire link https://bit.ly/3mlX4wc and paper copy circulated separately
10/11/20 Devon County Council
10.1 Outstanding Highways issues (see below)
10.2 New Highway issues
Broken depth marker gauge in Langford (PC not DCC responsibility)
10.3 County Councillor, Cllr M Squires, to report on DCC business relevant to the parish
11/11/20 Miscellaneous Correspondence
Any correspondence will be available at the meeting.
12/11/20 Minor Matters and Items for Future Agenda
Each Councillor is requested to use this opportunity to report minor matters of information not included elsewhere on the agenda and to raise items for future agendas. Councillors are respectfully reminded that this is not an opportunity for debate or decision making.
13/11/20 Date of next meeting: Thursday 3 December 2020, 7pm – via zoom
End of Formal Business - Public Participation
Agenda Item 5.5
Agenda item 9.1
The Parish Clerk
Newton St Cyres Parish Council. 1 October 2020
Dear Chairman and Councillors,
As the proposed village shop is now on hold due to the ongoing pandemic I strongly suggest that the project is seriously reconsidered.
It is now over a year since the village shop and post office closed. It has been reported that closure was due to insufficient profit and poor footfall, both essential for running a profitable retail outlet.
A village shop tucked away behind the parish hall will be invisible to most and have very limited footfall. There must be serious doubts whether a shop in such a location could yield sufficient profit to cover the costs of a managers salary, insurance and general overheads incurred in running a retail premises.
It is clear villagers have found other ways to get supplies previously obtained from the shop. The current post office, held in the village hall for two sessions a week, seems to cater for most needs. Limited banking services are available and pensions can be drawn. Also, other goods can be bought if they are ordered in advance. Villagers are going to the supermarkets and shops in Crediton, a mere five minutes by car or slightly longer by a good bus service. Also, many families are getting groceries and other goods on line, again delivered to the door. I have counted up to a dozen van deliveries in a day in Woodlands alone. Newspapers and magazines can be delivered to the door by an enterprising local company.
I don’t know how many villagers have asked for help in getting supplies through the Neighbourhood Watch scheme, perhaps the responsible councillor could say.
The survey carried out throughout the village in 2019 records results from 161 households, the parish council newsletter is distributed to over 400 properties, less that 50% response from the village. Subsequent figures and fancy charts showing a large percentage in favour of setting up a community shop are misleading.
The proposal to tie in a village shop with improvements to the Parish Hall is misleading. They are two completely different proposals and should not be promoted as a combined operation.
Yours sincerely
Agenda Item 9.2
Response from Peninsula Road Safety Partnership when asked to provide raw data
The raw data will mean nothing without the proprietary software to make sense of it. It comes as a .dat file which is only readable by the software which is licenced.
We do not have the other percentiles as these are not industry standard measurements and therefore the software is not set up to provide it.
I have no desire to be negative but by asking that question I am not sure if you fully understand how the speed enforcement industry, which includes DCC, have to operate.
In an ideal world we would seek to have 100% compliance with the speed limit however this will never happen without a huge cultural shift or the full implementation of autonomous vehicle controlled entirely by artificial intelligence.
Operationally the Partnership and the national speed enforcement industry as a whole accepts a small percentage of speeding vehicles will occur and nationally we use a percentage of all the vehicles measured as our enforcement point, that percentage point is the measure at which we gauge the requirement for enforcement.
This percentage point is often referred to as the 85th percentile, which basically means that this is the speed at which 85% of all vehicles using that stretch of road are travelling at or below.
The National Police Chief's Council (NPCC) has set clear speed enforcement guidelines which is generally the speed limit plus 10% plus 2mph.
Allow me to explain, the National Police Chief's Council sets an enforcement threshold of 10% above the speed limit plus a minimum of 2 miles per hour. The 10% comes from the Road Vehicle (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 which allow for inaccuracy in speedometers of 10% at 30mph and 70mph.
There are always vehicles speeding, it the is the nature of road traffic flows on any uncongested road, we have not denied this fact, in fact we openly acknowledge it in the way we review data for enforcement purposes.
In addition enforcement dead on the speed limit is very authoritarian and would alienate a huge proportion of law abiding members of the public who have allowed their speed to creep going downhill, accelerated a little hard etc etc.
From a speed enforcement perspective the 85th percentile has to exceed the NPCC enforcement threshold for enforcement to take place, this applies for Police officers stopping members of the public for speeding or the point at which mobile and static speed cameras record offending drivers.
For example enforcement only takes place in a 30mph limit if the 85% exceeds 35mph ((30 + 10%) + 2mph).
It is therefore completely immaterial asking for additional percentile points or all the numbers exceeding 30mph until the enforcement threshold is reached.
A driver can by driving at 30mph according to their speedometer but in reality is driving at 33mph due to legally permitted speedometer inaccuracies, therefore how could one ever ethically consider them for prosecution or just as importantly include their speed in any data used to gauge the level of speed non-complience.
The 85th percentile does sound an overly complicated method of speed measurement for members of the public, most people are more used to dealing with the average speed, this was measured at the same time and was only 28 mph.
As stated below over 10000 vehicles were measured, only 304 of which are definitely exceeding the speed limit.
Of those 304 only 70 were travelling about the point when we would consider a speed awareness course appropriate, i.e. the vast majority and of that 70 only 24 were travelling at a speed that would result in court prosecution.
As the equipment used to measure speed data cannot differentiate between a speeding motorist and an emergency service vehicle we have to take into account a small number of higher speed vehicles which can raise the 85th percentile and average speed slightly.
How many of those 304 were emergency service vehicles, who are legally permitted to exceed the speed limit we will never know.
It does not matter how you try and present the data, we as a partnership that have to process any offences generated and as DCC as the local authority that have to commission any average speed system, would struggle to provide any justification, under our operating guidelines of road safety, as to why an average speed system would be justified in Newton St Cyres.
The analysis does per hour per day and also breaks that down into speed ranges as well. You will have to wait for DCC to provide their response based on their analysis of the data.(Further email received to say that the data will not open as an excel file)
Agenda Item 9.3
Double lines should not normally be used within a built‑up area. This is because for any normal single carriageway road they prevent vehicles from stopping, which could be unduly restrictive in most residential areas. However they may still be required in certain situations, for example on multilane sections of road or at a level crossing. The Totnes location would presumably be within a multilane section of road to prevent vehicles from entering a middle lane in both directions of travel. Again this is not normal practice. But it may be in response to a specific safety problem in that location. At the Barnstaple end of the A377 in Bishops Tawton there are also double white lines that have been retained within part of the 30mph limit. But this is on a section of the A377 around a bend, where there is no need to stop on the highway. In most situations in Devon, any double white lines within an urban 30mph limit area will be a legacy from a time when the road was subject to a higher speed limit. In these situations they would normally be removed at the next resurfacing opportunity.
Agenda Item 10.1 - Outstanding Highways issues
- Speed restrictions in Station Road – SCARF re test requested
- Request for a School sign in Station Road and possible zig-zag lines outside the school – declined - requested this is re-considered
- Request for a Road Safety audit on A377 in centre of village
- Overgrown hedge/grass at Layby bus stop in Half Moon – some work has taken place, with more still to do
- Chapter 8 training for volunteers
- Drain cover on A377 – passed to BT as a fault